Letter from London - exhibit honoring Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev

Dance Magazine, Sept, 1996 by Margaret Willis

LONDON--Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev would have approved of the exhibition staged in homage to him at London's Barbican Center last spring. And he probably would have recognized the tense atmosphere that pervaded the air here on the day I attended the showing. Militia manned barricades at all entrances to the city, police sirens wailed eerily, and an uneasy fear of political uprising hovered over London, due not to pending revolution, as in Diaghilev's turn of the century Russia, but to the threat of IRA bombers. Yet, once into the Barbican Center, the atmosphere turned mythical, transporting the beholder back to an era where art, music, dance, opera, and literature had fused into brilliance, under the magic wand of that extraordinary creative genius from Russia.

"Diaghilev, Creator of the Ballets Russes" was the first major exhibition to comprehensively celebrate Diaghilev's artistic vision and achievements up to the beginning of the First World War in 1914. Over 300 items were displayed at the Barbican, drawn from private and public collections. Many were on loan for the first time from Russia, specifically from the Tretyakov Gallery and Bakhrushkin Museum in Moscow, and the State Russian Museum and State Museum of Theatre and Music in St. Petersburg. They were selected by Ann Kodicek, who worked directly with the Russian curators.

The exhibition was set out over two floors and displayed old photographs, costumes, theatrical designs, objets d'art, paintings, personal effects, and manuscripts (including leather-bound copies of Diaghilev's short-lived journal, The World of Art)--all reminders of the kaleidoscopic range of Diaghilev's career. It was his great love and interest in his Russian heritage that led him to bring the brightest creative talents together to create a rich artistic epoch. The exhibition also detailed the paths leading to the fulfillment of Diaghilev's dreams.

Tastefully and colorfully staged by Paul Dart, the exhibition followed the impresario's life from schoolboy to the visionary whose ambition and impetus first presented to Europe the hitherto little-known culture of Russia, and whose Ballets Russes was later to change the face of dance in the west.

Red plush curtains, draped elegantly to one side, opened the way up a staircase lined with birch branches, to a larger-than-life photograph (taken in New York in 1916) of the great man with dark, penetrating eyes, dressed in top hat and evening suit. Here on the upper level were memorabilia of Diaghilev's early years and his involvement with the art world.

Diaghilev was born in 1872 in Selistchev, near Novgorod in southwest Russia. His mother died shortly after his birth, and later, after his father remarried, he moved to Perm in the Urals. He was brought up in the cultured home of his grandfather, who'd amassed his fortune making vodka. The house boasted a well-stocked library of Russian classics and books in foreign languages, and was the center of intellectual gatherings and musical soirees. Being invited to this house was an honor. The young lad realized this and flouted school rules, taking every opportunity to go to the local opera house--sitting in the best seats, of course--knowing his teachers would say nothing for fear of being excluded from the gatherings.

Along with photos of family and of the house's interior, the exhibit offered a large portrait by Leon Bakst of Diaghilev with his beloved nanny, Avdotya Alexandrovna--Nanny Dunya. Nanny Dunya attended his birth, and was therefore Diaghilev's last link with his mother. She remained faithfully caring for him even when he was a young man, serving jam and tea to him and his friends during their lively discussions. When Tamara Karsavina in later years asked Diaghilev if he had ever asked for forgiveness for hurting someone's feelings, he replied yes, he regretted having on occasion run out of his flat without kissing his nanny's hand and asking for her blessing.

At age eighteen, Diaghilev moved to St. Petersburg. During his six years at the university, he joined the Society for Self-improvement, a group of promising young painters, musicians, and writers. Here he encountered such talents as Alexandre Benois and Bakst. When Diaghilev graduated in 1895, it was not as the composer or singer he had hoped to be. In a letter to his stepmother, he wrote: "I am first a great charlatan, though with dash; second, a great charmer; third, cheeky; fourth, a person with a lot of logic and few principles, and fifth, someone afflicted, it seems, with complete absence of talent. I think I've found my true vocation: to be a patron of the arts. For that I have everything I need, except the money."

A tour of Europe kindled a desire to promote Russian art in all its forms, and in 1899 he cofounded The World of Art. On show at the Barbican were some of the original illustrations and decorative frontispieces, as well as the first volume of the magazine, lent by the Victoria and Albert Museum. There were also fine portraits from the journal of the composers Glinka and Glazunov, by Ilya Repin; illustrations by Benois for Pushkin's tribute-poem to Peter the Great, "The Bronze Horseman"; Serov's portrait of Diaghilev's benefactor, railway tycoon Savva Mamontev; and Mickail Vrubel's Swan Princess, a majestic openwinged swan with silky pinkish plumage and the head of a darkhaired, solemn-eyed Russian beauty.